Executive Director Ma. Teresa M. Soriano presented this paper during the 1^st Tourism Human Resource Congress on the theme “Meeting Global Challenges Through Quality Education and Training” held on 17 June 2004 at The Peninsula Hotel Manila.

The paper starts with a brief discussion of the eight (8) criteria being used by the World Travel and Tourism Council to measure tourism competitiveness, namely, (1) price competitiveness; (2) human tourism; (3) infrastructure; (4) environment; (5) openness; (6) social development; (7) human resource development; and (8) technology.

It focuses on the Philippine tourism industry and the changing local and global environment. It discusses the importance of the industry in facilitating the mobility of tourists and workers around the world, and how it contributes to the regional, intra-regional and inter-regional competition on trade in services.

Specifically, it discusses the use of technology in the tourism industry, which renders the implementation of adjustment measures by managers of all travel and tourism establishments, whether big, medium or small, highly essential. These measures contributed to the rise of new forms and concepts of work organization and occupational profiles in the industry such as flexible work, seasonal employment, multi-skilling, continuous learning and competency building, language skills, and training delivery, among others. These further pose a number of challenges to the Philippine tourism industry, which at this stage, has yet to maximize its potential.